Southwest Airlines stops taking cash on flights starting today

A few months ago I wrote about how going cash free was the latest trend to hit the airline industry, with several carriers -- from Alaska to JetBlue and Virgin Atlantic -- going all plastic, all the time.

Now add Southwest Airlines to that list.

Southwest Airlines will no longer accept cash for in-flight purchases starting today.

Southwest instead will now take your debit and credit cards, and will also accept Rapid Reward coupons for purchases.

In making the announcement, America's most consistently profitably carrier didn't give a whole lot of reason for the change.

But other airlines have justified the move in recent months, saying going cash-free makes service more efficient, since flight attendants now won't have to carry money on them and be burdened with having to make change.

And let's face it: Since airlines are charging for everything these days, this kind of makes sense. Why make flight attendants fly with cash registers when they can make do with small electronic card machines?

Filed under: Airlines